Canada Council for the Arts Announces Honorary Recognition of Cultural Carriers

Ottawa, August 12, 2025 – Today the Canada Council for the Arts awarded an Honorary Recognition of Cultural Carriers to three people whose artistic and cultural endeavours further the use and promotion of Indigenous languages.

Cultural Carriers are people—including Elders, knowledge keepers and traditional educators—whose role in First Nations, Inuit and Métis communities supports the preservation, vitality and sharing of Indigenous worldviews, cultural practices and traditions through art and creative practice. The honorees are Language Keepers engaged in activities involving Indigenous languages, art and creative practice.

These Honorary Recognitions are given for a second year in the context of the United Nations International Decade of Indigenous Languages.

The recipients—selected among grantees from the Creating, Knowing and Sharing: The Arts and Cultures of First Nations, Inuit and Métis Peoples program—will each receive a $10,000 award for their remarkable contributions to the arts, culture and language.

About the honorees

Heather Campbell

Heather Campbell is an artist, curator and researcher originally from Kikiak (Rigolet), in Nunatsiavut, N.L., currently living in North West River, N.L. Her art practice encompasses painting, drawing and filmmaking. The Arctic landscape, flora and fauna are recurrent subjects in her work. In her practice, Campbell intertwines her knowledge of Inuit and non-Inuit worlds with her personal experiences to produce work that straddles tradition and contemporaneity. Her works are part of numerous private and public collections. Most recently, her work was featured in the group exhibition Indigenous Histories at MASP (Museu de Arte de São Paulo), in Brazil.

Heather is presently working on an immersive project representing Nunatsiavummiut life in a fishing camp, which will include soft, sculptural elements, paintings, a film work that incorporates archival footage, a sound piece created in collaboration with local language speakers—specifically in the Rigolet dialect—and a scent component. The Rigolet dialect is a unique and ancient dialect that once flourished on Labrador’s south coast and is critically endangered. Today, the Rigolet dialect is spoken by only one fluent speaker.

Sandrine Masse

Singer-songwriter and violist Sandrine Masse has been lending her voice and viola to diverse musical projects for over 15 years. A graduate of the École nationale de la chanson, she won the Georges-Dor First Prize and the Audience Choice Award at the Chante en français competition in 2022. After performing at numerous festivals, competitions and residencies, she released Là où la terre est (2024), her second atmospheric folk record honouring her ancestral lands. She introduces the Wendat language for the first time in Tho ïohtih, a song that topped the Attitude Franco (Sirius XM) charts in September 2024 and earned her the prestigious Karim Ouellet grant in 2025. Alongside her solo career, she showcases her culture through her multidisciplinary duo, Les Coz de maïs, and actively contributes to her community by participating in cultural mediation and revitalization projects.

Lisa Myers

Lisa Myers is an independent curator and artist with a strong interest in interdisciplinary collaboration. Her recent work spans printmaking, stop-motion animation and performance. She has curated numerous exhibitions at public galleries and artist-run centres across Canada. In May 2025, Myers, along with an amazing and dedicated team, completed the first season of Sounds Like Land, a seven-episode podcast series that delves into the connections between Indigenous language knowledge, plants and socio-environmental issues. The project supports language revitalization through land-based pedagogies aiming to inspire conversations about language learning and reclamation interconnected with discussions of plants and land. Recognizing the importance of diverse Indigenous oral histories and storytelling traditions, Myers turned to podcasting as an extended oral/aural medium.

Lisa Myers is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change (formerly the Faculty of Environmental Studies) at York University. She is a member of the Beausoleil First Nation and is based in both Port Severn and Toronto, Ontario.

About the Canada Council for the Arts

The Canada Council for the Arts is Canada’s national public arts funder, with a mandate to foster and promote the study and enjoyment of, and the production of works in, the arts. Through its grants, services, prizes, initiatives and payments, the Canada Council supports a dynamic and diverse arts and literary scene. These activities generate a meaningful economic, cultural and social impact for over 2,000 communities in all parts of the country and beyond. The investments and leadership of the Council help advance public engagement in the arts from coast to coast to coast, while also contributing to the international recognition of artists and arts organizations from Canada.